The Light Within You

We often assign light's function to mental and moral planes. For example, we speak of the light of conscience. When the mind is troubled and cannot decide what is right or wrong, we say that a kind of darkness has engulfed the mind. We need an inner light to show us the way. We call it conscience. Like light, it dispels the shadows of confusion and promotes clear vision and clear action.

Similarly, we may say that love is light. When a person is lonely and has no one to take care of him or her, life is really dark and meaningless. But if someone appears who can understand and care for this person, the darkness disappears. Having got new hope and joy, the world at once becomes meaningful with the light of love. We could also speak of light of compassion, the light of truth, the light of peace, and the light of knowledge. In each case a particular difficulty that can be compared to darkness is lifted and a positive experience of hope, joy and fulfillment come into being. These inner lights are more powerful than physical strength. One's world may be dark with regard to material possessions, yet his life may be shining in joy and peace because of the moral and spiritual light that has been kindled within him.

The most important inner light is the light of Consciousness. The Upanishads call it our true Self. It is the central light in the core of our being and it illuminates all experiences, including that of physical light. Even though we experience Consciousness all the time, it is very difficult to understand its real nature. Consciousness is the true essence of all existence. It has neither beginning nor end. It is eternal, infinite and ever shining.

Vedanta classifies normal experience into three levels of consciousness: walking, dreaming and sleeping. When we are awake, consciousness is always associated with some object - a light, a sound, a smell, a thought, or an emotion. Anything we know - externally or internally - first has to be experienced through consciousness. When we look into our mind, we see a ceaseless stream of consciousness or 'experience' in continual motion. We sometimes refer to it as objective consciousness since it is related to objects.

When we dream, a similar thing happens but in a different way. When we dream, there are links of knowledge and experience just as in the woken state but when we wakeup, we find that those experiences were not real. The most absurd thing is that we accept those experiences as real while asleep.

In deep sleep, we completely forget everything. We are not conscious of the body, mind, ego, or of the past, present or future. Vedanta advises co-ordination of these three experiences. A close study of these three states gives us the insight that there exists a common element in the woken, dreaming and deep-sleep states in the human personality.